1--- 2title: "pause" 3description: "The pause command description and usage" 4keywords: "cgroups, container, suspend, SIGSTOP" 5--- 6 7# pause 8 9```markdown 10Usage: docker pause CONTAINER [CONTAINER...] 11 12Pause all processes within one or more containers 13 14Options: 15 --help Print usage 16``` 17 18## Description 19 20The `docker pause` command suspends all processes in the specified containers. 21On Linux, this uses the freezer cgroup. Traditionally, when suspending a process 22the `SIGSTOP` signal is used, which is observable by the process being suspended. 23With the freezer cgroup the process is unaware, and unable to capture, 24that it is being suspended, and subsequently resumed. On Windows, only Hyper-V 25containers can be paused. 26 27See the 28[freezer cgroup documentation](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroup-v1/freezer-subsystem.txt) 29for further details. 30 31## Examples 32 33```bash 34$ docker pause my_container 35``` 36 37## Related commands 38 39* [unpause](unpause.md) 40